07 May 2013

5 Benghazi Mysteries that Must Be Solved

By Bryan Preston

On Wednesday, at
least three State Department employees will testify before the House
Government Oversight and Reform Committee on Benghazi. They are expected
to say that yes, there was a stand-down order during the battle. They
may also testify that the State Department itself has tried to bully
them into silence. What else they may say is not yet known.

As the Benghazi story has unfolded, many mysteries have persisted.
Why wasn’t the Benghazi mission’s security enhanced? Where was President
Obama? What role, if any, did Obama campaign officials play in crafting
the government’s communications after the attack? Perhaps Wednesday’s
witnesses can help shed some light on them.

1. Who gave the stand-down order, and why?

Fox and CBS have both reported that there was a stand-down order issued during the
battle in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Four Americans died, while as
many as 30 survived. Assistance could have come in from U.S. bases in
Italy or possibly from bases in the Middle East. There was a drone,
unarmed, overhead, and there have been reports that an AC-130 gunship
was also overhead at some point during the prolonged battle. The
question is not, now, whether there was a stand-down order issued. Fox
and CBS have independently reported that there was. The question is, how
far up in the U.S. chain of command was that decision made, and why was
it made? Additionally, how did U.S. forces react to that order? Was
anyone relieved of command for considering or attempting to disobey that
order, as has been rumored for months?

2. Where was President Obama and what was he doing?

As commander-in-chief, the president is ultimately responsible for any
U.S. response to attacks on our missions and personnel overseas.
According to official schedules and White House answers after the fact,
President Obama held a regularly scheduled meeting at 5 pm Washington
time with his then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, around the time that
the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began. No photos from that
meeting have been released. The American people have been told very
little about the president’s activities that night. He held the meeting,
the attack began and would unfold for several hours, and the president
reportedly went to bed that night in the White House. By the time he
went to bed, news had already broken that U.S. Ambassador to Libya
Christopher Stevens was missing. Obama went to bed not knowing his
ambassador’s fate, and reportedly learned the next morning that Stevens
had been killed. No photos of the president being present or in command
during the attack have ever been released by the White House. This in
itself is strange behavior from a White House that even released a photo of the president, by himself, holding a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston bombing. In February, Panetta testified
that he had no communication with Obama after their September 11
meeting, and in fact had no communication with anyone at the White House
at all during the attack, raising the question of whether anyone was in
the White House Situation Room monitoring the attack. It’s implausible
that the secretary of Defense and president of the United States would
not communicate at all during an attack on a U.S. facility overseas, but
that is Panetta’s testimony. That mystery deepens when we consider then
Secretary of State Clinton’s actions during the attack.

3. Where was Secretary of State Clinton and what was she doing?How much did Clinton know about the security situation in Benghazi before the attack?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s whereabouts and activities during
the attack in Benghazi are similarly mysterious. Clinton’s State
Department repeatedly rejected requests for enhancing security at
Benghazi, even as Ansar al-Sharia’s power in the area grew over the
summer of 2012. Why did State not beef up the Benghazi mission’s
security? The Benghazi attack was focused on the U.S/ consulate, which
belongs to the U.S. State Department. Why Stevens was in Benghazi that
night, and what the consulate may have been used for, remains unknown.
One of the Wednesday whistleblowers, veteran counterterrorism officer Mark I. Thompson, is expected to testify
that Secretary of State Clinton sought to cut the State Department’s
counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and
decision-making during the attack. Thompson also claims that the State
Department suppressed his account after the attack. Another unnamed
State official corroborates Thompson’s account. But Daniel Benjamin,
head of the counterterrorism unit at the time, says Clinton never tried
to cut his group out during the attack. All of this brings to mind the
question, exactly what was Clinton’s role on the night of the attack?
Secretary of Defense Panetta testified that he and Clinton never communicated during the attack. All three of
the nation’s top national security and diplomatic officials — President
Obama, Defense Secretary Panetta and Secretary of State Clinton — were
in Washington that night. Panetta and Clinton were evidently engaged in
responding to the attack, independently. Yet according to Panetta, they
never talked to each other during the attack. Why would they not
communicate during an ongoing attack on a U.S. facility overseas, if
indeed they did not? Both Defense and State would surely be involved in
any effective response to an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission
overseas.

4. Who changed the talking points, and who made the decision to blame a movie?

Stephen Hayesreported last week that the CIA’s original talking points drafted after the
attack made several references to al Qaeda and to the true nature and
origins of the attack. State Department whistleblower Thomas Hicks was
the mission deputy in Libya. Hicks says that the administration knew
that Benghazi was a terrorist attack “from the get-go.”
The CIA’s original talking points never mentioned a movie or a protest
at all. But beginning on September 12, through Clinton’s speech before
the coffins of the slain, through U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice’s infamous
five-shot on Sunday talk shows on September 16, 2012, the administration
said that the attack grew from a spontaneous protest of a movie. During
her talk show appearances, Rice claimed that the attack was not premeditated and that it happened due to a spontaneous protest of a barely seen
“hateful” movie that had been posted on YouTube months before the
attack. Why did Rice mischaracterize the attack? Was she aware of the
original talking points, and how they had been altered? Were Rice or
Clinton the senior officials on whose behalf State Department
spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had the talking points scrubbed of
references to al Qaeda and terrorism? Why was Rice the face of the Obama
administration that day, when she was the US ambassador to the UN, not
Libya? Why did the president and other senior officials continue to
mischaracterize the attack until the president’s address before the
United Nations on September 26? During that address, President Obama
said that “The world must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,”
in reference to the movie and the role that he and Rice and Clinton had
insisted it played in Benghazi. By that point it was obvious that the
movie had played no role in the attack. It’s now obvious that the CIA
and the administration itself were aware, during the attack, that the
movie played no role. Who changed those CIA talking points? Who decided
to substitute the attack’s actual cause — al Qaeda, in a premeditated
attack that we now know included operatives from as far away as Yemen —
for a movie? When specifically was President Obama aware that the movie
played no role in the attack? What role, if any, did he and Attorney
General Eric Holder play in the arrest and incarceration of Nakoula
Nakoula, the man behind the film that the Obama administration blamed
for the attack? Why did President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton
produce a public service announcement that ran in Pakistan, and
denounced the movie that they blamed for the attack, when the
administration knew from September 11 forward that the movie had played
no role?

5. Where are the Benghazi survivors and why have we not heard from them?

As many as 30 Americans survived the attack at Benghazi. Some of them have turned up, quietly,
at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Where are the rest?
Why have we not heard anything from them about the attack? Are they
being silenced by threats and intimidation from higher up in the
government, as several State Department officials claim is happening to
them?